Topanga Canyon, CA (August 5, 2016)—Singer/songwriter and solo artist Colin Hay, erstwhile frontman of '80s Australian pop band Men at Work, has been using Manley products on his recordings in recent times.

"I have engineers who work with me, but I do a lot myself, and I taught myself how to engineer,” says Hay, who put a studio together in the 1990s. “So I have to feel comfortable with a piece of gear and not get frustrated figuring out how to plug things in and get good sounds."

With the VoxBox, Hay finds he can get the sounds he wants with minimal stress. "A lot of the songs that I record in the studio end up being band songs, but they're born from the acoustic guitar. I get the tempo right, then record the acoustic guitar and vocal tracks. But I don't like to work with guide tracks; I try to always cut good-sounding tracks that I can use now or later. I know how I like to hear my voice, and the Manley VoxBox makes it easy to get the sound I want quickly, without help from an engineer. The Voxbox works very well in just about any recording situation: vocals, bass guitar, electric guitar, keyboard, whatever."

The multi-purpose channel strip also features a Direct Input: "I use the Voxbox primarily for vocals and bass guitar," says Hay. "It's my favorite piece of equipment for bass guitar; it sounds fantastic. It gives a very lovely tight, warm bass sound, and the bass sits in the mix extremely nicely, getting along well with the other instruments."

Hay is also a fan of Manley's microphones. "I really like the [Reference] Gold [microphone] for recording acoustic guitars, and it sounds beautiful on vocals. Of late, I've been using the Gold mic into the Voxbox, which is a fantastic combination."